Name: The Remainder
ISBN: 9781566895507

Alia Trabucco Zeran

A coffin, a camera, a bottle of pisco: three friends embark on a road trip through Chile to confront a history they can neither remember nor forget.

The Remainder

Alia Trabucco Zerán

Santiago, Chile. The city is covered in ash. Three children of ex-militants are facing a past they can neither remember nor forget. Felipe sees dead bodies on every corner of the city, counting them up in an obsessive quest to square these figures with the official death toll. He is searching for the perfect zero, a life with no remainder. Iquela and Paloma, too, are searching for a way to live on. When the body of Paloma's mother is lost in transit, the three take a hearse and a bottle of pisco up the cordillera for a road trip with a difference. Intense, intelligent, and extraordinarily sensitive to the shape and weight of words, this remarkable debut presents a new way to count the cost of a pain that stretches across generations.

Gary Homewood

Ash falls in Santiago, interspersed chapters from the point of view of a young girl, her brother's madness tinged internal monologues. An impromptu road trip as adults with a German woman to collect the remains of her mother. Some drugs, madness and symbolism. 

Feel like I missed some context of the country, it's history and politics, but a satisfyingly odd ride anyway.

The Remainder

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